Hi I'm back. Sorry for coming back. The game has been on my mind a lot the past few days. I was so disappointed by the game that I'm trying to somehow analyze why the game doesn't work for me. Rarely, very rarely I quit a game before finishing it, and never have I quit a RPG so shortly into it, and I've been playing these things since the 80's. So here is part two of my blog post shitposting rant.
How did this game came to be anyway? Was the game planned by Cain who took it to Feargus? Did someone brew this game in their head for years before pre-production started? Was this game the obsession and work of love of someone? I'm gonna wager my left nutsack that Feargus and "the execs" saw an opportunity, a market, for this game and it went into pre-production with a clean slate. No one had any characters, companions, locations, anything concrete in their head before hand. So the game came to life by committee (Feargus). Thank you uncle Feargus, you'll be getting a christmas card again this season. And yes, I still have my right nutsack too, I haven't lost that in a bet yet, thank you.
Actually, since we are on the codex and people love to talk about nutsacks (Hi Cleve!), I'll bet my other nutsack that when pre-production started, they studied all the metrics and went "by the book" to give the player the "most enjoyable gaming experience" as proven by studies. The game throws so much loot at you it is just silly, but it is what metrics (Blizzard) show people like. It does not matter how easy or difficult the game is, you should not get 81 stimpacks as loot from the starting zone. I guess no one told them they aren't making an MMO or Diablo. Soon I might be a nutsackless man, but I doubt it.
They wanted to add perks but had no vision or creativity on how to actually make them fun. I am outright baffled if Tim Cain played through the game 20 times and didn't call out a meeting saying they are gonna scrap the gameplay, rework everything. Is THIS gameplay that Tim Cain likes?! I cannot see Mr. Cain smiling and being thrilled by choosing these perks, using these weapons, playing this gunplay. I tried WildStar for like a week at some point, and Cain worked on it for years. This game feels oddly like WildStar. Sad thing is, I would take Wildstar's combat, zones, items, char development, skills, basic gameplay, UI, even fucking writing over this. I'm shocking myself thinking about that, but it's true. WildStar was a better game than this. What am I saying?! I must've lost it. /wrist
And yes, the writing. Oh the writing. I don't want to post a novel here so I'll just skip everything else and get back to everyone's favorite asexual engineer, Parvati. Like I mentioned before, I felt Parvati was penned by at least two different writers. The character starts off ok and I was looking forward to her development. Reading the stuff in her place mentioned her mother. Who here thought she'd have a storyline about her mother? Oh, right, everyone. You can put your hands down now. It was the obvious storyline and made all the senses in the world.
This storyline popped right into my head the moment I read those notes: Her mother was called back to earth by the company, she as a little child was sent back to her father, never to see or hear from her mother again. Now it is almost 30 years later, her father is dead and she gets to leave the small shithole of a place she has lived in all her life. We get to know her mother has risen to a high rank in the company and is making tough choices to make the numbers match, and has a hand on how resources come to the town. We somehow get in touch with her, videolink, something. Parvati finds out, partly blames her for the death of her father. So Hollywood, so predictable, so basic, but also so workable. I was looking forward to it. If written well, it would work fine. What did we get instead? Dear lord. -_-
Parvati is a femme engineer, nice, good for you. She is asexual, great, I'm supportive, I'll buy you a drink. But it isn't enough for the writer to double, triple, quadruple on the minority stuff. It gets into the surreal, the comical, the outright absurd. How about we swap the sex roles? How about we make Parvati a male nurse from a small town who is asexual. He has never left his small town but now gets a cab ride to explore the world. They stop for gas and he meets another sexual minority male nurse at the first gas station after leaving home. He asks the cab driver to get them some cake and deodorant. That sounds ridiculous right? Although I would watch it if it would be directed by David Lynch. Oh and remember to write it so that the 2nd male nurse runs a hospital too.
No, I'm not a writer by any standards, I'm just a random shitposter. If I'd be a competent writer with some talent, I'd go to bed at night reading the Chris Avellone Appreciation Station thread and sobbing why the codex doesn't appreciate my talents. Now I go to bed reading general and touching myself. Not that I'm complaining.
Maybe I'm expecting too much from my RPGs. I'm expecting more adult themes (which doesn't mean immaturity), more depth, more substance, but all TOW offers is content that feels like it is aimed at high-schoolers, or under matured late teenagers. It feels like the game is aimed at the character of Parvati. If I would have to critique the game face-to-face to Cain and Boyarsky, I would be ashamed. I'd have a hard time laying it straight to them. I really do not want to shit on other people's work, but damn. Guys. Really. I feel bad for disliking the game so much. Really bad.
Simply put, the game has no hooks. Nothing. There isn't a single thing that makes me want to start the game up. Not a single thing I look forward to in the game. No need to over analyze the complexities of how the game portrays corporations in a futuristic setting. Does not matter. A game just has to do something well. Combat can suck but story work. Story can suck but gameplay be awesome. Atmosphere, the ambience be off the charts. Companions who I find interesting. Character development and interesting loot. Something. Give me something! TOW doesn't give you anything. Absolutely nothing. And that is why I can't muster to finish it, let alone play it past the 2nd zone. One word used a lot here lately sums up the whole game well, vapid.